Some friends that were members of our church moved to Ireland about a year ago. A few of us were talking about them a few days ago and someone said that they probably moved to Ireland because the wife was afraid of snakes. And of course someone said thank goodness for Saint Patrick.
Well, most people know that there’s no validity to the rumor that Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.
The fact is, snakes have never slithered into Ireland. I actually read an interesting article about that in National Geographic a few years ago. Initially, what is now known as Ireland lacked a climate that was warm enough to accommodate snakes. About 8,500 years ago, temperatures rose enough to make Ireland a nice home for snakes. But the “heat wave” melted the ice that connected Ireland to Europe, and it became the island it is today. Since it was surrounded by water, the snakes couldn’t reach the land — that might be where the luck of the Irish came in.
So why, you might ask, does Great Britain, Ireland’s closest neighbor and also an island, have snakes? Well, Great Britain was connected to Europe until about 6,500 years ago. Snakes made it to Great Britain before the melting glaciers created the English Channel and isolated it from the mainland. So the snakes only got as far as Great Britain — Ireland was already an Island.
So how did the story of Saint Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland come about? Well, my English professor in college was a big believer that the use of a story or poem that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning — especially a moral or political one — was a powerful form of storytelling. Maybe in the case of Saint Patrick, snakes might have represented pagans because he worked tirelessly to convert people to Christianity — or — maybe not.
And while we’re on the topic of snakes, Ireland isn’t the only place without them. New Zealand, Antarctica, Iceland and Greenland are all places without snakes.
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